Auctioneers

Post-War sales at Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) tend to be more predictable, less mercurial events than their cool contemporary outings and the established reputations of the artists invariably guarantee a procession of solid six-figure results.

TWO maps of the Americas, as predicted, brought the highest bids in this Sussex sale at Rupert Toovey on 13 February. A copy of William Heather’s New General Chart of the West Indies... of 1809, backed on (contemporary) paper and with some light soiling and a few small tears to the blank margins, was sold at £900, while for Heather’s New Chart of the Coast of America from Philadelphia to the Gulf of Florida..., a corrected and improved edition of 1812, bidding rose to £1450.

French billionaire quits battle over auction market: Backed by a dotcom businesswoman and an investment bank, two auctioneers last week bought the majority stake in Phillips de Pury Luxembourg from luxury goods group LVMH.

THE policy of these Cheshire auctioneers, Maxwells, to hold a decent sale in January rather than in the crowded period before Christmas generally pays off, and did so this year although, that said, the local associations of the top seller would probably have resulted in a good price at any period.

Would that every soldier was awarded a piece of porcelain, as well as a medal, for acts of outstanding bravery. What a civilised army that would make.

TWO LOTS were bid to £800 in the 150-lot book and map portion of this Hampshire sale on 6 February at George Kidner, which put them some way ahead of most others on the day.

The music sale held by Sotheby’s on December 7 contained two exceptional manuscripts – both of them presenting examples of the composer’s best loved works.

THE COPY of Colonel William Fitzpatrick’s Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul... that sold for £380 in this Somerset sale at Greenslade Taylor Hunt on 13 December was not a great one.

While it is almost impossible to sell some routine furniture at present, Keys specialist Paul Goodley echoed the traditional view that attractively pitched guidelines are the key to success.

Against the background of the London Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales both the major auction players held specialist Surrealist evening sales – Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on February 4 and Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) on the following evening of February 5.

NOT the priciest offering at Exeter auctioneers Hampton & Littlewood (15% buyer’s premium) on January 30, but undoubtedly the most interesting was this early 19th century automaton right, made from bone.

Christie’s South Kensington’s Ski sale, held annually in February, was doubly topical this year, coinciding with the Winter Olympics.

There were peaks and troughs in Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) annual 166-lot Art Nouveau sale, February 12, but little appears to have changed since their last auction foray into this field, in April 2001.

In 1805, William Blake was commissioned by Robert Harley Cromek to make a set of 40 drawings to illustrate Robert Blair’s poem The Grave, 20 of which Cromek proposed to have engraved by Blake.

USA: The annual general sale of good quality classical coins (446 lots) hosted by the triumvirate of Baldwins (London), Markov (New York) and M&M (Washington DC) took place in the Big Apple on January 17.

BOOKS played a fairly minor part in the first Newbury antiques sale of the year at Dreweatt Neate on 30 January – one that raised in excess of £1.5m, a record for the Berkshire saleroom – but they did get the proceedings under way, and the very first lot in the catalogue, a misbound and now disbound and browned copy of Love in a Village, a comic opera as performed at The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden... showed the way in selling for a double estimate £200.

Sotheby’s have responded to the threat of legal action over alleged price fixing at UK auctions, playing down the claims of legal firm Class Law.

FRANCE: Pictured right is a restored 18th century two-part fountain basin, with a veined red marble shell topped by a white stone lion head, which sold over expectations for €25,000 (£15,500) at Tajan on January 30

Buying art as an investment has always been a perilous business. Back in the 1920s during the so-called Etching Boom speculating collectors were prepared to pay hundreds of pounds – ie more than the price of an average London house – for single prints by ultra- fashionable artists such as Muirhead Bone, David Young Cameron and James McBey.

Rise of Winifred Nicholson goes on apace with amazing bid of £100,000 for portrait of Ben: Over the last two or three years Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981), the first wife of Ben Nicholson, has become an increasingly significant figure in the Modern British market, culminating in the record £52,000 paid last July at Phillips for one of her trademark window still lives.